Thursday, March 22, 2012

[RIFT] Life at 50

I decided to go back to RIFT for a little while. When I last left RIFT, I had just levelled a cleric to level 50, the max level. So I've been working on the cleric since then. I've not really bothered with looking up information on the internet, mostly playing the game by itself.

It's an interesting experience, hitting endgame without being plugged into the external community. It is kind of daunting, and probably far from optimal.

Take something as simple as enchants. I have no idea if RIFT has enchants. I checked the AH for item enhancements, and there were enchants, but it looked like only for weapons. I'm not sure if there are enchants from other sources, like factions.

Speaking of factions, I'm earning reputation with them, but I have no idea where the quartermasters are, or even if they sell anything useful.

I've mostly been running dungeons. You need a certain gear level to get into Expert dungeons, and I finally managed that, and have done a few of them. They're more or less like WoW Wrath Heroics. Pretty easy at this point, with a few mechanics you have to watch for. The groups are pretty nice, but it's mostly an AoE fest.

One interesting thing is that the queue time for DPS is actually rather short. I sign up for dungeons as DPS or heals, and I'm about 50/50 on which role I get.

So far, RIFT at 50 is pretty fun. But the experience has illustrated to me just how large the gap between someone who is "informed" about everything, and someone who just relies on in-game hints or advice is.

A large number of the dungeons give rep to the zone they are from. This means the majority of their rep is useless as it mostly applies to leveling gear.

In addition Rift has various factions for pvp that have rep grinds too. From a pvp perspective they kinda threw away the 2 faction warfront thing by allowing Mercenaries. Essentially it's a system that will fill the que to get really fast games. If there were 8 defiant and 12 guardians it will now split is 10 and 10 instead of waiting for both sides to fill. One thing you might find interesting pvp wise is that Rift really did away with movement being so vital. In WoW there is a huge focus on being able to move your toon all built around your trinket and speed buffs. Btw if you didn't notice Break Free is now in the general section of your spellbook.

If you are finding the dungeons a bit to easy try joining a progression guild and start getting into some Master Mode dungeons. They aren't available in LFG so you need a preformed group. That said maybe try soloing some of the chronicles as they can bet tuned fairly difficult if you are trying to solo.

If you haven't made it to Ember Isle yet I also suggest getting over there. They set up a reworked Tower defense like mini game with planar forces. It's rather fun.

If you haven't got one yet try working on getting a planar focus with all four minor slots and two major slots. They really impact you character.

As a cleric I suggest working on buying all your role slots since clerics have so many options in that regard. Personally it kept the dungeons rather fresh for me being able to switch between heals, ranged dps, tanking and aoe healing hybrid spec.

I find RIFT is really suitable for this kind of play, honestly. I have a level 50 and a level 27 that I am levelling verrrrrrrry slowly, and for both characters I just log on and run around a bit when I feel like it and just do random events as they pop up, or play with my talents for an hour. Good choice!